Forest and Trees

Forests and trees play significant roles in the lives of Pacific Islanders, economically, socially, culturally and environmentally. In many Pacific island countries, especially on the smaller islands and atolls, agroforestry and tree crops provide most of the food, medicines, construction materials, firewood, tools and myriad of other products and services that cannot be replaced with imported substitutions. For the larger countries, forests have contributed significantly into their economic development in terms of foreign exchange earnings, employment and infrastructure development. Thus, a major challenge for Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) is to ensure sustainable management of their scarce and diminishing forest and tree resources, taking into account demands for economic development and the social and environmental needs of their growing populations, LRD-SPC is addressing this under its Forest & Tree programme.

A two-day agroforestry workshop was recently organised by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) in Vanuatu with the main objective of enhancing the knowledge and skills of the participants in the areas of nursery design and management, seeds and seedling production, and plant propagation.

Twenty participants from the Department of Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock and the Vanuatu Agricultural Research and Technical Centre (VARTC) attended the workshop, which was held at the premises of VARTC in Luganville, Espirito Santo.

The agroforestry training is part of the initiative entitled Enhanced climate change resilience of food production systems in Pacific Island countries and territories, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

According to the country coordinator of the project, Romone Luke, this training has enabled him and his fellow participants to acquire the necessary basic knowledge and skills to be able to start making improve

ments to their current farming practices following the agroforestry concept, which will contribute to the overall goal of achieving food and nutritional security, biodiversity conservation, improvement of soil health and secured incomes for families and communities.

‘Under the USAID project, we are developing an agroforestry demonstration farm on the island of Uraparapara, located near Sola Island, to show our communities how they can optimise the productivity of their farm lots. The knowledge and skills gained from this training will help us a lot in making our project a success,’ said Mr Luke.

'The participants,' he added, 'have now realised the importance of selecting good planting materials and properly maintaining a nursery.'

Mr Luke elaborated. 'We aim to spread agroforestry farming practices all over Vanuatu, with the help of line ministries such as forestry, livestock, agriculture and fisheries. This is to bring about an integrated farming approach that provides more options to farmers. It will also show that all these sectors contribute to improving the livelihood of farmers.'

The project harnesses an innovative partnership between two SPC divisions, the Applied Geoscience and Technology Division (AGTD) and the Land Resources Division (LRD).

AGTD is providing geographic information systems data to LRD, enabling more accurate and informed implementation of climate change resilience activities on the ground.

SPC and USAID, in collaboration with partner agencies, are supporting the governments of six Pacific countries – Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu – in their efforts to tackle the adverse effects of climate change on food production.

The support includes updating vegetation and land cover maps at the national level, and working with local communities to implement appropriate adaptation measures to build their resilience to climate change.

(For more information and media queries, please contact Mr Vinesh Prasad on email ID
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--- +679 3370773, alternatively, for any further queries, you may contact the LRD helpdesk
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